Pathways to Quality through Health IT - 2011

Summary: Recent legislative initiatives and new care delivery approaches have highlighted the importance of timely, targeted quality metrics, and the essential role of a robust and supportive information infrastructure. Significant progress has been made in understanding the requirements, capabilities, and best practices of such information systems. However, the sharp increase in initiatives to integrate measurement of health care quality and health information technology (IT) underscore that gaps in knowledge persist.

AHRQ's longstanding investment in building the evidence base on quality measurement through health IT is exemplified by funding opportunities such as the Ambulatory Safety and Quality: Enabling Quality Measurement funding opportunity announcement, which has supported innovative demonstrations, approaches, and methodological work. To continue these efforts, AHRQ seeks to develop a well-informed strategic plan to improve health care quality measurement through health IT that describes near-term (3-4 years) resource requirements, longer-term (5-7 years) issues, and subjects that must be addressed.

To this end, this project will engage in activities such as asking for public comments through a request for information and holding focus groups with experts and key stakeholder groups to articulate current obstacles to improving quality through health IT. This will inform a key deliverable of the project-the final report-that will attempt to characterize an ideal future health information infrastructure for actionable and prioritized national quality measurement and reporting.

Project Objectives:

• Develop a background report on the current state of quality measurement through health IT and relevant initiatives in health IT and quality measurement. (Ongoing)
• Gather stakeholder input on gaps in resources and knowledge in health IT and quality measurement. (Ongoing)
• Develop a final report. (Upcoming)

2011 Activities: During 2011, staff held the project kick-off meeting and submitted a work plan, project schedule, and a draft background report outline. Stakeholder engagement pre-work was initiated. It was determined that there was no need for institutional review board approval.

Preliminary Impact and Findings: This project has no findings to date.

Target Population: General

Strategic Goal: To develop and disseminate health IT evidence and evidence-based tools to improve health care decisionmaking through the use of integrated data and knowledge management.

Business Goal: Knowledge Creation